Portable Professions

Rebecca Law explores the traps and secret passageway of the professional life of a trailing spouse.

When life moves abroad, shouldn't the career follow?

I am a butcher; I am an architect. It is perhaps no
coincidence that we employ the verb to be when describing our
professions. Anyone who has built himself or herself a career will
understand that it is as intrinsic to their identity as the fact that they
are, for example, female or that they might be bald. When it comes
to careers, we do not just do, we are.

The prospect therefore of giving up a thriving career to accompany a
spouse who has been deployed internationally could potentially leave the
“trailing spouse” with a gaping hole in their lives and, whilst the prospect
of spending days lying in the sun, topping up the tan and sipping leisurely
at cocktails should fill most with delight, faced with this long-term, even
the least erudite spouse will, after a short while, find themselves at best,
twiddling their thumbs looking for something less frivolous to fill their
days, and at worst, tearing their hair out from sheer frustration.

Recent statistics in Working Abroad: The Complete Guide to Overseas
Employment by Godfrey Golzen and Jonathan Reuvid show that 60% of
expatriate spouses had worked prior to their partner’s overseas assignment
but only 16% had worked during the assignment. My own research shows that in
most cases, this is not through choice. English teacher, Jane Colman,
explained how her vocation was quelled when she followed her husband on an
assignment to the Gulf, for the simple reason that she was a woman. “As a
woman, I was only permitted to teach other women and the work simply wasn’t
available,” she says. Ingeborg Hudson remarked that her career also took a
nose-dive when she started following her husband on his overseas
assignments. Each time they moved, her natural nesting instinct would take
over and compel her to create a “home” for her family and, as soon as she
found time to focus on her career again, it was time to move on.

Although companies are wising-up to the gravity of the predicament faced
by the trailing spouse and the impact this can have on the success of the
assignment as a whole, the number of companies who offer any assistance is
still relatively small. According to research carried out by relocation
company ECA, only 12% of companies have established a support policy.

For those left to cope without any form of institutional support, perhaps
a little solace and inspiration can be drawn from the case of international
author, Jo Parfitt, who proves that all is not lost when you up sticks and
go.

Before accompanying her husband Ian on a posting to Dubai back in 1987,
Jo had been running her own thriving business in the UK, writing computer
manuals and teaching word-processing. The stamping of “not permitted to take
up employment” in her passport on arrival in Dubai, therefore came as
somewhat of a shock.

“I was soon bored and desperate to find a way of filling my days that
would not get me deported,” she says. Refusing to be defeated, she
discovered after a little research, that she was in fact permitted to work,
as long as she found an employer to give her a work permit.

Having worked out how to clear the first hurdle with relative ease, Jo’s
momentum suddenly ground to a crashing halt at the second; her analysis of
the local market had shown that there was little need for computer handbooks
in Dubai, and, since she was working in the days before the internet
explosion, writing manuals for the UK market was not a viable option
either.

This is a problem that will be faced by many who seek to employ their
existing skill-set in a new country. Cultures vary greatly from country to
country as therefore, do local market needs; a beer salesman would probably
find his business “drying-up” if he were to relocate to Kazakhstan, for
example or, to use the redundant adage, “carrying coals to Newcastle” would
prove a dead weight to the bearer.

“I realised that I needed to create a niche,” says Jo. “A few
months later I had a work permit from a recruitment agency, and in return I
provided a curriculum vitae writing service and one-to-one computer training
courses. I was still writing and still teaching, but thanks to a little
lateral thinking, I had found a new way of making these skills work in a
different location”.

In the ensuing ten years, Jo and her family lived in four different
countries, yet despite the odds, she sustained her, admittedly varied,
career throughout. She puts this down to a few simple steps, which she has
applied repeatedly to reinvent herself professionally in each new location.
For the successful portable career, she suggests firstly that you look
inside yourself for what you love to do.

“If you are to stay motivated enough to be able to repeatedly put down
and pick up a career, then you must do something you enjoy”.

Then, you should look outside at your current location and see what
opportunities there are.

“When I arrived in Dubai, I heard people complaining that no-one offered
a CV writing service; proactive jobseekers notice what people moan about and
turn those problems into career opportunities.”

“I found as many ways as possible to bend my core skills and passions,”
she says. Despite living in four countries during the decade, she managed to
uphold a career in some capacity by, for example, making and selling date
chutney, teaching French, creative writing and computers. She became a
journalist, wrote manuals and newsletters and even self-published a cookery
book.

It is this willingness to revise her career at every stage, which has
proved critical to Jo’s success; she has not merely tried to transpose her
career rigidly from one location to the next but has assessed the
transferable skills she developed back in England and has applied them
appropriately according to the market. Jo’s case shows that if you are
prepared to look, the opportunities are endless, proving that when you are
off to foreign lands, you don’t need to leave your career behind on home
ground.

For more advice and ideas from Jo on how to reformat your career to suit
a mobile lifestyle, go to: